Okay! So I feel a little more invigorated recently and decided that I should take advantage of that and start writing some more reviews. After seeing Marvel’s Phase 4 and 5 plans I started to get really excited and wanted to return to a couple of series that I could see starting to become more relevant as more characters are introduced. One of these series was “New Avengers”, a team of heroes set up by A.I.M. who usually tend to have more villainous schemes than heroic ones!
‘Standoff’ starts with a showdown between White Tiger, Ava Ayala and Angela Del Toro, the previous owner of the White Tiger Amulet. The real surprise comes when it appears that Angela who was busted out of prison by The Maker, an evil Reed Richards from an alternate dimension, is given the Tiger Amulet from the Maker’s dimension. Cue a big battle between Tiger Deities and the cancellation of Ava’s powers. Meanwhile, over at S.H.I.E.L.D., it seems that Rick Jones has decided to play whistleblower and suddenly the New Avengers have a decision to make. Do they go in and save Rick knowing that suddenly they’ll be seen as the bad guys even though everyone thinks that anyways? Or do they keep out of it? Naturally, a team of heroes can’t let down someone in trouble, and they break into the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier to rescue Jones. Although they have to go through a couple of superpowered S.H.I.E.L.D. agents they manage to get the job done. Naturally, this puts them on the hitlist of every US Government agency and suddenly The New Avengers find themselves going up against General Ross’s latest experiment; American Kaiju. This man who was turned into a Godzilla-like creature is the newest weapon in the US army. The mastermind behind the New Avengers, Roberto De Costa, aka Sunspot, however, has a few surprises of his own, one of which includes a giant robot named Avenger Five. Things may look bleak but this group of wiley heroes know how to take a stand. Will they be able to make it out in one piece though? And does every single member’s allegiance truly belong to the New Avengers?
Given that the members of the New Avengers are not very well-known characters, I think the novel does well to highlight the personalities of each member. The first issue especially sets up the future of the series in an exciting way and then we get a completely different story leading to a decent amount of anticipation. I’d say the overall story wasn’t the most exciting, but the individual issues here and there help keep it fresh. That being said I still feel that it’s difficult to connect to this team given the fact that they’re set up by A.I.M. but we’re not sure why. So far the missions have felt small in nature and from now on, the series will need to up the ante regarding villains for the team to still have a place in the larger Marvel Universe.
The artwork was variable and some of the issues were okay, but others not so much. The covers I felt really did lack in quality, unfortunately, and the one above was the best in a set of average artwork. Overall, it wasn’t a bad novel, but I think there’s more potential to be untapped here!
Favourite Panel:
This is such an American thing to do.
Favourite Character:
Ooh tough. I have to say, one of the most diverse characters I’ve seen in Marvel Comics is Hawkeye. Sometimes he’s jokey. Sometimes he’s serious. But he’s always a good character to read!
Rating:
Story Arc: ★★★
Character Development: ★★★
Artwork: ★★½
Enjoyability: ★★★
Re-readability: ★★
Level: Intermediate